Andrew Mwenda’s recent remarks on Uganda’s fiscal predicament should resonate far beyond Kampala. When nearly half of government revenue, 46 percent, is consumed by debt servicing, leaving only 54 percent for salaries, roads, bridges, dams, healthcare, education, and other public investments, the challenge is no longer merely fiscal. It is developmental. A nation cannot sustainably build its future when an ever-growing share of its resources is dedicated to paying for its past.

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High-cost domestic bonds yielding up to 18 percent, short-term commercial borrowing, and growing dependence on expensive regional lenders are not uniquely Ugandan problems. They are symptoms of a broader African disease, an overreliance on costly, short-term debt that finances today’s expenditures at the expense of tomorrow’s prosperity.

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Mwenda rightly warns that Uganda risks approaching a point where government bonds could lose investor confidence, particularly when anticipated oil revenues have already been incorporated into optimistic fiscal projections. Across the continent, similar patterns are emerging. As concessional financing becomes scarcer, governments increasingly turn to commercial debt markets where lenders demand high risk premiums.

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Africa’s challenge is not a shortage of assets or economic potential. Rather, it is a failure to unlock and monetise those assets creatively and efficiently. The continent possesses substantial streams of predictable future revenues that can be transformed into investable assets capable of attracting long-term capital at significantly lower costs than conventional borrowing.

By ring-fencing future revenues within transparent Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), governments can mobilise large pools of upfront capital with better repayment terms without selling strategic national assets or compromising sovereignty.

Beyond securitisation lies the broader opportunity of layered financial engineering. Public assets, state-owned enterprises, infrastructure holdings, and future revenue streams can form the basis of structured financial products that attract pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and institutional investors seeking stable long-term returns. These structures can recycle liquidity, reduce risk, and expand the availability of development capital without relying excessively on debt accumulation.

Such approaches are neither theoretical nor experimental. Emerging economies across Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America have successfully used asset-backed financing, structured products, and blended finance mechanisms to accelerate infrastructure development and industrial transformation. Africa can adapt these lessons to its own realities.

While Mwenda has accurately diagnosed the symptoms, the deeper challenge lies in policy inertia. Many African economies remain trapped within financing models dominated by commercial banks, short-term debt markets, and donor-dependent frameworks that were never designed to support the scale of transformation the continent requires.

The time has come for governments to establish robust legal and regulatory frameworks for securitisation and asset-backed finance. Transparent project pipelines, reliable cash-flow forecasting, and strong governance mechanisms are essential to building investor confidence. Countries with stronger institutions should take the lead, demonstrating that Africa can become a producer of sophisticated financial solutions rather than a perpetual consumer of expensive debt.

Mwenda’s warning should not be interpreted as a message of despair.

It is a call for innovation. Africa’s demographic growth, resource wealth, expanding urbanisation, and increasing intra-continental trade require financing at a scale that traditional borrowing models cannot sustainably provide.

The continent stands at a crossroads. One path leads to continued cycles of expensive debt, recurring fiscal crises, and constrained development. The other leads to a modern financing architecture built on securitisation, asset-backed capital formation, and innovative financial engineering.

We urgently need policy courage to pursue the alternatives. The future will belong to those who learn how to finance tomorrow using the assets and opportunities they already possess.

The writer is an ideator and alternative development financing strategist.